Tuesday morning roundup

Erdogan consolidates his power in Turkey by making his cabinet unfailingly loyal to him, so that the country's parliamentary system will be just for show.

His opponents, and skeptical Western allies, fear growing authoritarianism. Prosecutors have opened more than 1,800 cases against people for insulting Erdogan since he became president in 2014. Opposition newspapers have been shut and journalists and academics critical of government policies sacked.

European Parliament President Martin Schulz criticized Erdogan's accumulation of power in comments published on Monday, describing it as a "breathtaking departure from European values" in a nation negotiating for membership of the EU.

"We see Turkey under Erdogan on its way to being a one-man-state," he told German newspaper Koelner Stadtanzeiger.

This doesn't mean that the climate jackboots have entirely given up their quest, but Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker dropping his demand for a decade's worth of records from the Competitive Enterprise Institute is a significant win against the forces that attempt to demonize the oil industry.

Very incisive analysis of the China issue at NRO from Jerry Hendrix. He says that China probably doesn't actually want war with post-America, but that its regional strategy seems to be a response to phase three of the Joint Operations manual that has guided US thinking about conflict for about 20 years:

China’s actions are representative of a new phenomenon that is increasingly characterizing the foreign policies of authoritarian states around the world. Like states such as North Korea, Iran, and Russia, China has recognized that America is trapped by its doctrinal adherence to “phasing,” the method by which it goes to war as delineated in Joint Publication 3-0, “Joint Operations,” first published in the early 1990s. As its name suggests, the method lays out six major phases of war: phase 0 (shaping the environment), phase I (deterring the enemy), phase II (seizing the initiative), phase III (dominating the enemy), phase IV (stabilizing the environment), and phase V (enabling civil authority). It’s a step-by-step approach that has come to dominate American tactical and strategic thought.

The problem is that when you write the book on modern warfare, someone is going to read it, and those that seek to challenge the United States most certainly have. They know that U.S. war planners are all focused on phase III — the “Dominate the Enemy” phase — and treat the separation between phases as impermeable barriers. America’s concentration on phase III has allowed rising competitors to expand their influence through maneuvers that thwart U.S. interests in the preceding three phases, maneuvers cumulatively grouped in a category known as “Hybrid” warfare. Authoritarian states have mastered the art of walking right up to the border of phase III without penetrating it, slowly eroding American credibility without triggering a kinetic response.

He sees a scenario in which post-America may have to land with some kind of force on one of these artificial islands China has made, in order to assert the notion of international territory.

In the latest example of the current regime's let-them-eat-cake attitude toward the cattle-masses (following closely on the heels of the wait lines at some post-American airports so long that they resulted in hundreds of missed flights, and Jeh Johnson's response), VA Secretary Robert McDonald says that since wait times at Disney resorts are comparably long, it's nothing for anyone to get steamed about. Yeah, he actually said that.

And ICE is opening special detention centers for transgendered illegal aliens.